Offsetting festive season

We are fast approaching that time of year where many of us are spending more and more time at Christmas parties, eating too much of the wrong food, drinking more than we should, training less that we’d like and basically doing the festive indulgence thing.
I’m not going to preach at you about trying to avoid parties or to reduce your consumption of certain things, instead I’m going to suggest a strategy for offsetting that festiveness…

Think about your body like a bank account during the Christmas period. Every time you eat too much cake, drink the 5th glass of wine, skip training because of the hang over, miss a run because of the late night or do anything else that withdraws from your body bank, you simply need to find a way to make a deposit or two.
Now, please don’t think this is a licence to eat, drink or consume copious amounts of anything and then simply run a few extra miles to counteract the impact. Far from it. But we do need to take into account that a withdrawal will have an impact and that impact can be “managed” to a degree, by taking actions that reduce that impact.
Examples may be – intentionally eating only fresh vegetables and drinking water for a couple of days after a party where you ate junk all day. Or, increasing your long slow run to focus on using fat stores for fuel after having too many beers.
Perhaps it is something as simple as eating a bigger healthy breakfast and lunch during the day before a dinner party, so that you are less likely to consume too much at dinner.
There are endless ways in which you can offset the so called “bad stuff” with “good stuff”.
Be creative and try to make the counter-actions something you enjoy or something that makes you FEEL good also.

The other thing to remember is that for many people, Christmas is a very stressful time. So enjoy yourself, don’t take it all too seriously, and then just do what you can for your body so that it doesn’t have to pay for it later!

Run long,
Shaun Brewster.

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